8 tracks using shift

[glass pawn]

What: I love the creative constrains of 4 tracks, but advanced mode that allows more less polyphonic tracks by using shift and track should allow for extra 4 tracks.

Why: some people like to have everything structured in more lanes. Also would enrich the sound of each sketch and allow to tweak more double lanes.

[humble robin]

Yeah shift arrow down in session view to reach the next 4 tracks

[eternal temple]

i don't think this is going to happen tbh... i imagine 8 drum tracks each with 16 samples playing at once will kill the CPU. it would be twice as many voices as the MPC live supports, just to give a comparison

[glass pawn]

This mode could be optional and warn you if high processing is detected.

[lost osprey]

See also: https://discord.com/channels/1019528834317553664/1294047818507358321

[wise siren]

I am ok without this personally.

[lost osprey]

The key to making this possible would be reducing polyphony, but to actually make it work within the design ethos of Move would mean it also has to be relatively simple and straightforward. That rules out anything like a CPU meter, and as much as I'd love to see a Digitone-style voice allocation menu, it's probably not a candidate for Move either. I think there are ways they could make it work, though – maybe a simple toggle for "polyphony mode" versus "tracks mode" where the latter cuts polyphony however much is necessary to add 2-4 additional tracks.

The thing is, with 8 voices per synth track and apparently 16 per drum track, Move has plenty of polyphony to go around! It would be cool if they could build a global voice-stealing system for "tracks mode," although Drift and Wavetable would probably need a lot of refactoring to support a shared voice pool.

[heady aspen]

Even though the 4 track limit is somewhat circumvented by the 16 part drum rack, slots are all monophonic, you only have a couple tracks of instrument tracks for polyphony, you are always going to have to use 1 track if you want to resample to drum rack slots.
Thats why they should add at least a couple of other tracks or some sort of buffer track to be used as an instrument or melodic sampler track to resample from.

[tawny meteor]

pls pls pls, yes my no 1 feature request!

[desert herald]

Yea, does a monophonic lead/bass patch use the same polyphony/resources as a polyphonic one? Prob not. But, it's also difficult to say what a "voice" truly is since there are are different synths, spreads, stacks, drifting, detunes, etc. If a set has voice stealing on Move and no voice stealing on Note/Ableton, your set could sound drastically different!

[timber gulch]

8 tracks would be awesome yes

[uneven wyvern]

As they said in a recent Instagram video, it won't happen because they chose a wimpy CPU (well, an optimal one for 4 tracks).

[odd shell]

I’m okay with there not being more than 4 onboard tracks. I would gladly welcome tracks 5-8 as midi-output only tracks once the midi software stack is built out, though

[ember comet]

If it could've coped with 8 tracks, they would've had it already I think. It wouldn't take much coding to add a shift function and duplicate the track class already implemented, but it would require pretty much double the system specs/resources.

[uneven wyvern]

It's not about "if it could've coped". The CPU costs $35 retail, probably much less in bulk. They made a conscious decision to do a 4-track machine so that you're compelled to buy/upgrade Live and finish the tracks there. They simply found the cheapest, good enough processor to handle 4 tracks with the specced devices & FX on them. They were not expecting people will be asking for Wavetable preset import and it won't happen - also confirmed in the Instagram Q&A - simply because there's no performance margin available to allow people use full version of it, and they were using a limited, cut down version for factory Wavetable presets.

BTW, I'm not saying that to complain or criticize, etc. - they did precisely what they needed to meet the design goals and deliver it cheaply, both for Ableton and the users. Too bad they've not designed it as an 8 track machine.

[odd shell]

There are a lot of decisions that go into designing a product and choosing components. I think your post makes some fair points, but asserting that they made the choice about the processor in service of forcing Live upgrades (and further sales) upon users isn’t founded in anything other than speculation. A license for Intro is included with Move and is more than enough to arrange work done on the Move into a complete recorded work. Many users of Live that purchase Move will already have a license for Standard or Suite meaning this would not drive sales of their other products for many users. It’s really easy to talk about the reality of the product without prescribing intention to the product team that hasn’t stated anything of the sort anywhere.

[humble robin]

Buy two 😀

[uneven wyvern]

Well come on, they're a company and their key product it Live. That's why you only get Intro/Lite license even with Push 3 Standalone, that costs almost $2k. I'm not saying that's the sole reason they came up with Move, but that's a big part of it. Like Apple - Logic is just $200, but you need a hardware dongle to run it 🙂

[thin crater]

The Raspberry Pi 4 (cm4) is too busy with its 4 tracks. I wonder if there will be an upgrade kit later. Raspberry Pi 4 (cm4) -> Raspberry Pi 5 (cm5) To be able to have 4 more tracks 🤔 .

[sturdy venture]

FYI Johannes explained the reasoning behind the 4 tracks limitation in the Instagram Q&A:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie7qIwBm64w&t=326s

[fleet perch]

Thanks for providing a nuanced viewpoint. As also described in the video, these decisions are influenced by many factors and tradeoffs (technology, cost, design etc), and we definitely took our time to meditate on the 4-tracks question.

In the end you have to assess your own confidence in "is this product worth shipping and will it impact music making in the way we feel is right?". And we felt that the answer to that is "Yes".

[ruby chasm]

Yeah that would really be great to sync some more fully fledged sound generators. Again however I think this is not what Ableton have in mind (would rather you move to full Live after sketching something)

[soft bay]

This is the way. I'd love to have this implemented, please!

[broken mesa]

Even if the other 4 tracks were just MIDI only, for sending/receiving MIDI, that'd be fantastic for extra MIDI capture capabilities.

No additional tax necessary for adding additional Ableton Move engines, just pure MIDI.

[shadow lodge]

Never lol if you use Schwung in any capacity you know they are being very reserved I can have 400 chops all at one time using recycle ♻️ but the machine impacts my music making process positively even vanilla so I’m not complaining I just have requests for samplers and the sample based Producer functionality and QOL I think if these are taken seriously the move will live as one of the best portable samplers ever built, period

[queen edge]

I would love the main 4 “instrument” tracks and 4 additional midi out only tracks. Kinda a shame to loose 1 track to manage an external device. Hopefully midi only tracks don’t tax the system much to allow “8” tracks.

[shadow moth]

+1 on the extra midi tracks. Im fine with the 4 tracks for move audio, but with 4 midi tracks in addition i could use the move as the brains for a dawless setup. Slight bummer to need an additional sequencer for this. The move is so compact that it would be perfect for this.

I am aware that this is not "what move was designed for" so completely respect it if not done, but would be make me me love my move even more 😂

[shy forum]

In the meantime, you can do this using Schwung, with either https://github.com/andree182/schwung-fork (using regular Move interface) or https://github.com/legsmechanical/schwung-davebox (completely new interface)